


Hopes like the stars in sky.

by rayfelle



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:34:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/pseuds/rayfelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tips of his fingers reach out towards the stars, hopes to catch something that could pull him out of this nightmare. Had Eren been younger he would have climbed the tallest tree and tried to become one with the sea of blinding lights above.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hopes like the stars in sky.

He breathes into the black night, his breath a warm fog that soon freezes into the air and rattles against the trees surrounding him. There is silence in the air. But his mind is a frenzy of movements and noises, clicks at the back of his head that count down the sunrise when the frost will melt and his heart will return to the same old bruised and beaten little thing that it had been before the evening settled on the houses and grass.

The tips of his fingers reach out towards the stars, hopes to catch something that could pull him out of this nightmare. Had Eren been younger, still innocent and sleeping in a warm bead, listening to his mother’s even breathing while she sleeps, he would have climbed the tallest tree and tried to become one with the sea of blinding lights above. But he’s tired now. Old enough to know that there is no way to escape this hell.

Something inside of him groans, creaks as the joins move and wake ups. The green eyes glaring up at him from the abyss of his own soul are so alike to his own. And so wild and uncontrollable, like they have a life on their own.

He looks at the abyss and a monster looks back. How typical.

The night ghosts across his skin, it whispers cold against his heated skin. Promises to kill the seas of emotions swimming inside of him and overflowing, bursting through his actions and words like wildfire. It’s calming. Like nothing that Eren had heard before, even if those promises had been said in words and sighed with black ink, like orders to be executed before the day breaks and dies before their eyes. It wasn’t the same.

His fingers curl in fists, raised against the black that never ended. Maybe if he wished hard enough, fought harder and cried less he’d receive the salvation of peace. Because the exhaustion was seeping into his bones, turning his blood into tar and drying out the tears that he wanted to shed. Nothing about him felt human now. Just the eyes of the monster were left to stare at the back of his head and wait for the moment when everything finally is too much and Eren tears himself open. Spills his own blood to run away from the burdens being placed on him.

Eren lets his hand touch the cold earth again, rises from the grass digging into his skin and looks forward. There is nothing to see. Just fields and forests stretching on endlessly, silently. Like the sea that Amrin had dreamed about, the freedom that Mikasa had prayed for when she thought no one could hear her visits to the gods.

Maybe he had made the wrong choice. Maybe this was all heading towards destruction and rebellion, a plague of sorts that killed everything it touched and caressed. But did he care? Not now, not when he had finally found the beauty of life, hiding away in sipped spider webs and first songs of newborn animals.

He breathed in the first signs of winter rain, the snow that covered his body and the stinging emptiness now making his fingers turn blue. Nothing had even felt so good before. Not even the warm tea shared with the Captain or the compliments spilling over Hanji’s lips when she talked and talked, forgetting the time and place. Everything was still here. Everything was alive both inside and out.

Walls open and gates kicked out. No chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles, breaking his bones and scratching along his skin like rats starved for days. Slurs and promises of death given as salvation once everything was purged clean left behind in the rotting alleys of the cities built and kept alive atop of white bones turned into ashes.

Eren stands and breathes in once more, opens his mouth for a scream that doesn’t come, catches in his throat like stale bread. It had been years now since the last time he spoke, formed the names of those he cared about long ago. Now there was nothing left, just ruins of his life and the hopes that had once burned bright inside of him.

So he walks away from the walls, the endless fields of red flowers and graves. He walks towards the unknown and unseen, towards the dreams of those who died so he could live in this world. Maybe dying had been better of a choice, now that there was nothing left. Death follows his every step, like a wolf tracking down the prey in the jungle of greens and browns, though the bony fingers never reach far enough to catch on Eren’s shirt, his soul that barely keeps hanging on to the broken body that was once so painfully human.

Once the sun rises there will be horses rung after him, ghosts of the past sliding along the frozen earth. They will appear into the sunlight and then disappear where shadows play next to the trees and buildings, forgotten the same way that Eren had been. He’ll hear the voices in his ears whisper about seas of red tears and deep trenches that never ended. About mountains so high they pierced through the earth and cosmos. The voices will ask him to forget and forgive, live on as long as he can and smile as before, long ago.

Maybe, he’ll listen to them. Maybe he will just pretend he’s young and try to become one with the nightly sky once more.


End file.
